North Dakota Badlands

INTO DEEPER SILENCE

Camped on the Little Missouri

late October,  the young Ranger

tells us the park’s winterized

and water shut off. Five miles in,

we’re the only ones at Cottonwood.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park at Medora.

Carne asada and Mexican Rice.

Grasses all yellow and brown

contrast with tinted greens in sage.

Animal tracks on the River.

A lone buffalo just before the campgrounds.

Slow traveling and museums

from Mandan to Bismarck

exhaust the imagination.

Meriwether Lewis in my head again.

What happens to the mind inside

deep travel. Impossibility of return?

Extinction as graphic as the dinosaur.

Crossing the ocean floor of North Dakota,

why have I never imagined underwater

creatures larger than the camper on the pickup?

On the top wall of the museum, a movie

shows the planet giving birth to continents

over time—598 million years in 1 minute, 46 seconds—

the fetus of our world being born. I film

it four times. My wife records it on her telephone.

Hearing language of Hidatsa and Mandan

by native speakers with translations.

Williston Basin and Bakken Formation

become more familiar than family.

Circumference and depth. And just below

Bakken, one more possibility,

Three Forks—banned for now from drilling.

Gas flares light up North Dakota skies. Tonight,

though, it’s quiet in the Park—just us and critters,

and we’re turning towards home. Another

confrontation rich with tribal chance.

The Corps of Discovery, almost forgotten

for 90 years, made the journals vulnerable,

 without accompaniment. So much we don’t know, so…

Jim Bodeen

20 October 2015

Cottonwood Campground

Theodore Roosevelt National Park